A few handfuls of grass seed mixed with a few bags of cheap topsoil makes filling in bare spots in your lawn a snap!

Since I had a professional come in and clean out the crater in my ugly backyard, I’ve been practically obsessed with growing enough grass over the large area of dirt that was left after all the stone and sand were removed. I don’t have a lot of time because I have an infant son, so I wanted to plant grass but not spend a whole weekend doing it. In just a few weeks I’ve been able to get a fairly good base of grass growing using a little trick I started using last year when I had some bare spots I had to repair in my lawn.

As I’ve said before, my lawn isn’t exactly golf course quality at this point, so I haven’t been too fussy about what kind of grass I have growing at the moment, as long as it is indeed grass and as long as it is green. Remember, this is a 45 year old home and lawn that has been neglected for the past 5 years, so anything green I can get down on the ground is a good thing!

I used to plant grass seed the “slow” way were I would prep the ground with a rake, put down a thin layer of top soil, sprinkle my grass seed and then put down another layer of top soil. Depending upon the situation I would sometimes rake it over lightly and put down more seed and more soil all over again. This works, but I found myself spending a lot of time and using up a lot of soil on a small spot.

My method for growing grass quickly is really pretty straight forward, but it does require you to have a few things:

5lb Grass Seed (cheap stuff is okay, maybe $10 for a 5lb bag)
2 - 3 Medium Bags of Top Soil (cheap stuff, only $1.40 for a bag)
Wheel Barrel or Garden Cart (helpful, but not completely required)
Shovel
Sprinkler and Hose

Here’s what I do:

1. Pour a bag or two of the top soil into your wheel barrel and break it up a little bit so it’s sort of loose. I usually just put a bag in the wheel barrel, bring my shovel down on end of the bag and then just lift it, letting the top soil tumble out.
2. For each bag of top soil you used, take a handful of grass seed and throw it into the wheel barrel.
3. Now use your shovel and just mix the soil and seed together as though you kneading bread and mixing in raisins or nuts. All you’re doing is mixing seed and soil, but you want to make sure the soil is fairly loose (easier to spread).
4. All you do now is shovel out the soil mixture and lightly sprinkle it over your bare spot. I sort of hold the shovel with my left hand and use my right hand to just twist the shovel enough to shimmy the soil off the end. All you need is a very thin layer of the soil and seed mixture.
5. Once you’ve distributed all your soil and seed mixture you set up a sprinkler and water that spot. A lot. I can’t emphasize how much you need to water new grass seed to really get it to start growing. If you pay for your water then you might want to consider waiting until they’re calling for a good day or two of solid rain before doing this, so nature can give you a little help in the watering department.

The new grass looks better than the rest of my lawn!

That’s it! This soil and seed mixture seems to almost always start growing fairly quickly for me because you’re putting down rich soil with seeds mixed all through it, not just on top or underneath it.

I use this method for large areas as well as small areas. About three weeks ago I dug out some old rotted railroad ties from around my patio and filled in the indentation that was left with a few shovels of this soil and seed mixture. After two days of rain and a week of sunshine the grass had filled beautifully and actually looked better than the rest of my lawn!

Of course, if you want to really help the process along, you could rake over the bare spot to loosen up the existing soil, throw down a quick layer of seed, rake over the spot lightly again just to mix the seed in and then use the method I described above. When I know that I have plenty of seed and I’m not in a hurry I’ll sometimes do that as well and get grass growing within just a few days.

Oh, and just for a test I threw down some grass seed on a part of the lawn where I hadn’t mixed it with topsoil and spread it out. Some grass did grow, but it wasn’t nearly as full and tall and lush as the grass that was started with this method!